maintaining friendships

This weekend Jessica Foley will be celebrating her friendships by joining four friends for dinner at one of their favorite restaurants, Brown Sugar, and then see Sex and the City with them at Fenway, a movie theatre near Fenway Park in Boston.

Jessica is an accomplished 30-something trial attorney whose practice at Sullivan and Sweeney LLP focuses on family law, personal injury and criminal defense. She graduated from Northeastern University School of Law (J.D. 2001) and Smith College (B.A. Biochemistry 1997). She is a member of the Norfolk County Bar Association, the Quincy Bar Association and the Women’s Bar Association---and she volunteers in local causes including the Scituate Animal Shelter.

Jessica graciously agreed to discuss plans for her SATC Girl’s Night Out.

Jessica, can you tell me a bit about the friends who will going with you?

We are all in our 30’s. Three of us met in law school ten years ago and have been close ever since. The other two are friends we met through each other. My law school friends and I have seen each other through a critical part of our lives. When we met we were young and single and just starting out. If I recall, only one of us had a serious boyfriend. We have seen each other through boyfriends, exams, more boyfriends, break-ups, divorce, marriage, re-marriage and kids.

Do you often have a Girls Night Out?

Sadly, not often enough. When we first met none of us were married or had children. Most of us lived in Boston or the vicinity and were able to get together a lot!

Why are you getting together for the movie?

Sex and the City celebrates female friendships among very unique and different women. We are all followers of the show and different from one another. For me, it’s a chance to connect. I went to Smith, a women’s college, and formed great relationships there. It taught me just how important it is for women to support each other. I feel very lucky that I have such fantastic women in my life!

What draws women to Sex and the City?

The show follows women through their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s---through marriage, divorce, kids, infertility, boyfriends, and cancer. You name it, they cover it! All while dressing fantastically! They also plan a time to get together regularly.

What are some of the challenges you and your peers face in maintaining female friendships?

Sometimes work and life get in the way of making time for ourselves and each other. We are all on crazy schedules and have different focuses – i.e. one friend works part-time and has two little girls; one friend works at a big firm, is newly married and very busy. I am married and work full-time. One friend lives on the Cape and one works full time and has a toddler. Add husbands and extended families into the mix and it’s tough to get together with just the girls!

How important are female friendships?

Very important. In my personal life and in my career, developing and maintaining female relationships are very rewarding and help me keep my sanity.

Any other thoughts you want to share?

Thanks for asking me all these questions, now I am going to email and/or call some of my college friends I haven’t talked to in awhile. Thank goodness for technology or we might never connect.

Women are: Daughters, girlfriends, sisters, mothers, lovers, wives, workers, students, caregivers and FRIENDS!

The significance and order of these roles vary according to the person and change over time. In a 24/7 society, where multi-tasking is not only expected but often demanded, it’s not surprising that even the best of female friendships sometimes get short shrift.

Friendships are prone to fray if they aren’t nurtured. So we need to find small ways to make these important relationships stick:

• Remember her birthday with a call, card or flowers
• Send her an old-fashioned postcard next time you are on vacation.
• Send her a note on pretty stationary, for no particular reason, expressing what her friendship means to you.
• Call her to wish her and her family a happy holiday.
• Acknowledge other milestones: her promotions at work, her anniversary, or her children’s birthdays.
• Don’t be vague about when you’ll see each other again. Schedule face-to-face time.
• Take a class together or join the same gym.
• Got kids? Enroll in the same Mommy and Me class.
• Don’t ever allow three months go by without any contact.
• Email her to let her know you are thinking of her.
• If you live nearby one another, find ways to coordinate chores and other things you have to do: Schedule your mammograms together, go food shopping together, take an exercise class together.
• If you live far apart, plan a girlfriend getaway each year.
• Make her your friend on MySpace or Facebook.

How to make it stick? All it takes is making friendship a priority and a little bit of creativity in re-ordering your priorities! One woman I interviewed for the Fractured Friendship Survey told me that she exercises simultaneously with her friend who lives thousands of miles away. As they both use the treadmill, they talk and motivate one another to exercise. At the same time, they remain connected across the miles.

If you ask two friends to describe how they became Besties, they usually say “we just clicked.”

That certainly is the case for Sal Henley Kibler and Mari Maseng Will, now both 53 years old, who first met at freshman orientation at the University of South Carolina. They pledged the same sorority and roomed together from their sophomore year on. “Maybe we were drawn to each other because we were the tallest women we had ever met,” jokes Mari. (At 6 feet she is just two inches taller than Sal.)

Turning an instant friendship into a lasting one requires time and effort but Sal and Mari have been able to maintain their relationship over the years by playing the game: golf. “We are God parents for each other’s children and seem to go through life’s twists and turns pretty much at the same time,” says Sal. Despite living states apart, their shared love of golf has helped them stay connected and remain close to one another.

“Our playing ebbs and flows with the time available since we are both trying to work, raise children and spend time with our husbands,” says Mari, who lives in Washington, D.C.

“We started playing golf about five years ago, once our kids got to be tweens and our careers were a little more established,” says Sal. Now the women try to play together at least once every six weeks, although it doesn’t always work out that way.

Like most women, they find it hard to justify time away for themselves. “We are getting better at that, though,” says Mari. “Our common interest erases the miles, and the years,” she says. “We laugh all the way across the course and it feels good. Women need their community of women friends to lean on. Golf provides opportunities to be together and hours of time to talk and laugh – in the outdoors and at beautiful settings. The game is all about the golfer and the course--- at that moment. There’s no room in your head for work pressures, science projects and what you’re going to do about dinner.”

Both women place a high priority on their friendship. They realize that no matter how hard they try---their work, children and families are never going to be perfect---so they might as well have fun. “Our colleagues, our children and our husbands seem to be happier when we are,” says Mari.

Sal Henley Kibler is publisher of momseasychair.com, an online magazine and community for women who also happen to be moms. She has held executive positions at several leading advertising agencies in Atlanta, and ran her own marketing consulting firm. Mari Maseng Will was a speech writer for President Reagan and served as his last communications director. She ran corporate relations for a worldwide consumer products company, and served as press secretary and then communications director in Bob Dole’s Presidential campaigns. Today she runs her own business consulting with major corporations, industry groups and non-profit organizations.

What a wonderful milestone it is to reach a 95th birthday---but imagine the added pleasure of being able to share your cake with someone you’ve known for 90 years!

Edith Brook and Una Kilner were born two days apart in 1917, met on their first day of school at Longley Hall five years later, and have stayed connected ever since. Well, almost. There was a brief period when they lost touch with one another as they raised their respective families.

According to an article in today’s UK Telegraph, the two women have vowed never to let that happen again. The article quotes Mrs. Kilner: "We meet every fortnight to catch up. We always phone each other and we'll stick together through thick and thin."

Some say that the pair’s friendship is the oldest one across the pond.

One of my oldest and dearest friends, Diana, has a memory like an elephant. I’m always amazed (and sometimes embarrassed) that she can recount vivid details of things that happened to the two of us several decades ago. She even remembers events I told her about that never directly involved her!

As we age, friendships become more dear---especially old ones. Knowing someone who knew you then is almost like taking a journey back to your youth. Friends can help us retrieve old memories and understand the characters and context of our lives better than anyone else.

An old Turkish proverb goes like this, Bir kahvenin kirk yil hatiri vardir, which translates into English: A cup of coffee commits one to forty years of friendship. One interpretation of the proverb is that no friendship should be taken lightly because friendship is a long-term commitment.

In reality, most female friendships tend to be transitional rather than long-term. As we cycle through life---childhood, high school, college, marriage, children, careers, etc.---we change and grow as do our friendships...

Some people worry that digital technology is eroding the face of friendship as we now know it---that time spent in virtual relationships detracts from real ones. A new report provides evidence to the contrary. Among Americans:

• 48 percent of those interviewed said that social networking sites help them build new relationships

• 44 percent said that social networking sites help them maintain current relationships

This social effect cuts across age groups:...